My whole body goes cold at once. “In person,” I repeat, like saying it back will make it make more sense.
“It’s time we did this properly. Face to face.”
“Why now? Nothing’s changed.”
“Something’s always changing, Grace.” A pause, the kind she uses to let a thing sit. “You’ll go to the usual spot behind the hardware store. Not a drop this time. We’ll meet you there.”
The usual spot. Where I’ve left things before—twice, three times—things I told myself didn’t count as much as they should have. A few pages torn from a diary. A report on an excursion that happened six months ago. Small. Useless to anyone trying to plan an actual operation. I made sure of that every time, made sure whatever I handed over couldn’t get anyone at Aurora hurt. I told myself that was the line. I told myself that as long as I held it, I hadn’t really crossed anything.
I don’t know what it means that they want to meet me instead of just taking what I leave behind. Maybe they think I’ve been slow. Maybe they’ve stopped believing the little I give them is all there is. Maybe they just want to look at my face and see if I’m lying.
You are so damned screwed.
“I can’t just go off compound without a reason,” I say. “People will ask where I’ve gone.”
“You’ve managed before.” A beat. “Your sister’s looking better these days. Healthier. The people looking after her seem to like her.” Another pause, precisely timed. “It’s amazing what a little cooperation buys.”
My throat closes around whatever I was going to say next.
“We’ll expect you within forty-eight hours,” she says. “Don’t make us wait.”
The line goes dead before I can answer.
I sit on the stairs with the phone still pressed to my ear, listening to a dial tone that isn’t there, my heart going too hard against my ribs. My hands are cold. My knees don’t feel like they’d hold me if I stood right now, so I don’t.
They want to look at me.
I don’t know what changes when a voice on a phone becomes an actual face, but I know it isn’t nothing. Everything about this has stayed at a careful distance for months—a call, a drop, a photograph of Serenity that could have been taken anywhere. The distance was the only thing that ever let me pretend there was still a wall between what I do in this place and who I actually am.
They’re taking the wall down.
I push the phone back into my boot and sit a while longer, elbows on my knees, staring at the dead space above me.
I can’t go back to Kaylin’s room like this. She’ll take one look at my face and know something’s wrong, and I don’t have anything true to tell her.
So I stay where I am.
Months of small things. Months of telling myself the drops didn’t matter because I made sure they didn’t—measuring out exactly how little I could hand over, never once letting it tip into something that could get someone killed. I thought that was enough. I thought if I could just keep it small and useless and survivable, I could hold this open forever without it costing anyone but me.
It was never going to stay small. I think I always knew that and just didn’t let myself know it.
They’re done with what I’ve been giving them. They want more, and they want to watch my face when they ask for it, and somewhere behind all of it is a room where Serenity is sitting, healthier these days, cooperating, waiting for a sister who still hasn’t found a way to get her out.
I’ve been treading water. Buying time Serenity doesn’t have, because I’m too afraid to admit I don’t have a clue how to free her.
You should have gone to Viktor. Or Jericho.
I rub my eyes. They know about Serenity. When I first got here, they said they’d find her. And then the calls started, telling me her safety depended on me doing what I was told.
They’re going to hurt her anyway. I’m one person against an international operation that sees my kind as less than human.
What the hell am I going to do?
You’re such an idiot, Grace.
It’s too late now. Too late to go to Viktor and tell him what I’ve been doing. He’ll lock me up. And when the Syndicate finds out I’m compromised, Serenity’s as good as dead.
I have to do something.
